UFOs - Close Range Sightings.

Originally posted by karl 12
there is this report taken from Major Donald Keyhoe's UFO Archives (link)
featuring a transcript from an NBC television programme about the Exeter incident from 1966 - John Fuller is discussing the sightings with Dr J.
Allen Hyneck, Donald Menzel, Frank Salisbury and Leo Sprinkle....Donald Menzel doesn't come off too well.

Thanks for that Karl. Fuller mentions that exchange in the book. There is more to it that makes Menzel look even worse. I liked the "Now, will you
shut up?" from Menzel when he was confronted on his "scientific" investigation...

This object, seen very clearly and distinctly at close range, consisted of a base approximately eight feet wide appearing like two saucers
placed edge-to-edge, surmounted by a dome about four feet wide. A series of ports, round on top, extended straight down to the base of the dome.
Atop the dome was a smaller structure, above which was an antenna-like superstructure topped with a small sphere.The color of the body of the UFO was
dull aluminum; the second-story dome was entirely vented, in appearance somewhat similar to a radiator grill. The ports, six or seven in number and
encircling the lower dome, were slightly indented and white in color, giving the appearance of frosted glass.No light shone through.

"At this point, I came within about 300 feet of the UFO. It was about 30 feet in diameter. It was an enameled, cream-colored dome, with a
wide, circular, metallic base. It had no engines, no exhausts, no windows, no wings or antennae. It lacked all the typical aircraft components, with
no visible propulsion system"

Reports of very close sightings of discoid UFOs with transparent domes, with "human-looking" UFO-occupants, include Mrs.Roestenberg, age 29
at the time, and her two sons over her home near Ranton, Staffordshire, England in Oct-1954

Chuck Sorrels: My name is Chuck Sorrels, a retired Air Force air traffic controller. I'm recording this on May 16, 1995. In 1965, 30
years ago, I was a tech sergeant in the U.S. Air Force, attached to the19 25th Communication Squadron at Edwards Air Force Base in California. I was
the air traffic controller on duty in Edwards tower on the night of October 7, 1965. I was working a midnight shift in the tower when at
approximately 1:30 a.m., I spotted a group of luminous objects in the air above and around Edwards Air Force Base. They had a flashing red light on
the bottom, with a green, glowing light above the red.

They also sometimes flashed or glowed a white light above the green light. The sightings lasted until about daylight, 5:30 or six a.m. At first I
sighted one object, which was larger and brighter than the rest. At one point there were seven objects visible at the same time. The objects would be
stationary for a period of time and then move very fast to another location and appeared to be able to climb straight up in short order. Good
eyesight and my experience as an air traffic controller made it plain to me that these luminous objects were not planes, helicopters, stars,
satellites, weather balloons or any other known aerial object. Your job as an air traffic controller calls for you to be watchful.Training told me
these were not normal objects. The objects weren't supposed to be there. These were objects out of the normal, from their appearance and flight
characteristics. I reported these sightings to base operations and the Los Angeles Air Defense Sector. The objects were also seen by at least five
other people on Edwards Air Force Base. They were also seen by George Air Force Base tower and were showing up on radar in at least four different
radar sight locations.

I was surprised to view those cone and pyrimid shaped ufos on the previous page, because I remember that the RAF Bentwaters witnesses described one of
those? Landing. It was Penniston or Burroughs who touched it. They left footpad prints where it landed.

Originally posted by simone50m
I was surprised to view those cone and pyrimid shaped ufos on the previous page, because I remember that the RAF Bentwaters witnesses described one of
those? Landing. It was Penniston or Burroughs who touched it. They left footpad prints where it landed.

Hey Simone, I think the Penniston close range case is quite a controversial one (link) but many
thanks for bringing it up, I don't know if you've seen it but Spacevisitor has made some mighty fine posts
here and
here concerning the incident and other sightings on the same evening.
Cheers.

. it was night time and i remember seeing a big triangular shape black mass flying over my car with its
lights off. Probably cloaked. then i remember seeing it zoom away. To bad i didint have a camera at the time

Does anyone in Ufology know what became of Charles Hickson? I hung out with him for a time, at the Eureka Springs Ozarks annual Ufo Conference back
in (I can't remember what year exactly) late 1980's-to-abouts-1991 maybe it was 1990. I have some pics of him from there. Nice little old guy. Very
meek and nice.
I thought of him (with concern) during and after the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. (If he would still be living and in Mississippi by
then.)

This was my first post on this forum, the text was linked from another site but written by me..... I wrote this in November 1997 so please take that
into account when reading. Note the shape of the object was described as Pyramidal. Shortly after I originally posted this, an acquaintance posted me
a PM on another forum not linked with the paranormal and told me another tale that happened to him and 3 friends in the winter of 1980 South of
Birmingham UK where they saw a landed object in a field next to the road of a very similar design to the one in this tale. Until then he had never
told anyone about the sighting and the 4 people involved never spoke to each other at the time or since about what they had witnessed. I would suggest
for 4 people to see such a sight and not even say anything at the time it was happening shows just how weird it must have appeared to them and that,
as with so many people, they simply subconsciously decided it hadn't happened.

This all occured some 27 years ago this week, on a night just like this, the sort of night one really only finds in Britain. A cold damp night that
chills to the bone.

I had been on business in Newcastle upon Tyne and decided to pocket the hotel and travel expenses and return to London via thumbing a lift. It's
nearly 300 miles but i thought, with a bit of luck, i could do it without too much hassle.

I found myself at a service station on the A1, just south of Newcaslte, by about 7 o'clock in the evening. I am standing on the exit lane to the main
road when a guy approaches me and asks... where I am bound?. I tell him London and he repies that he can take me as far south as Nottigham and will
pass me on to a guy who should be around when we arrive there. The price of this generous offer, is that, i buy him tea and wait for him to watch the
soap opera "Coronation Street" on TV at the services.

Some 40 minutes later, we set off ensconced i the warmth of his truck. The usual pleasantries are exchanged when the guy suddenly says to me.

"Look i shouldn't have picked you up"..... "If i am caught i will lose my job"...

"You see, the truck I am driving belongs to "Towmaster Trucks" and Towmaster are owned by Bells Whisky and on the back of this truck are crates of
it, stacked two high, I am delivering to a Port in Southern England" Plymouth, if memory serves me right, the guys route was certainly commensurate
with that destination.

" As such" he continued, " You can imagine that, for security reasons, there is no way we are allowed to have strangers in the cab whilst we are on
a delivery"....

He went onto to explain that, the trucks travel in groups of 3 some 10-15 minutes apart and that, they are tracked and kept an eye on by unmarked
police cars throughout their journey. Sure enough, not long after, he asked me to duck down in the seat as a saloon pulled alongside us and the driver
made some hand signals to the occupant(s) of the car, then flashed his headlights, to let them know, I assume, all was well...

At this point i am thinking.. "Wow the guy really does seem to be risking his job to give me a lift, but there again, it must be mindnumblingly dull
spending 10 hours on the road with no company. In the early 80s most British trucks still often came without even a radio and CBs were only just
making inroads with the trucking community over here.

I really don't remember how the subject came up but suddenly the trucker says to me...

"I'd like to tell you something that happened to a friend of mine on this run".."Something really rather strange"

As the guys guest, i was only to happy to listen. The story that then unfurled was not one i was expecting at all.

Before the Motorways were built, the main artery from the South West to the Midlands and North east of Britain was and still is, a road called the
A38. it cuts diagonally across from the English North Eastern Midlands to the South West, branching off from the main North South route from London,
around Nottigham, as already mentioned.

I should point out here, that back in 1980, after about 10 pm at night, even the Motorways of Brtain were actually, pretty damn quiet. Apart from the
odd truck it was common to go 10-15 miles without seeing another car, post midnight, even on a main artery like the M1.

That said, a smaller road like the A38, at midnight, was a pretty desolate place to be, especially at this time of the year , November. There were
then very few lit sections of the road betwen Nottingham and the Birmingham area, some 40 miles away.

Anyway, the trucker goes on to talk about his friend who, at the time, drove a truck,like him, for the Towmaster fleet. On a particuarly dark and
empty section of the A38, he had been driving and saw, what he took to be a fire in a field by the roadside. Out of a natural curiosity he had slowed
the truck down so he could try and see what was happening. His first thought was that, it could be a farm house on fire, and if so, he was in a
strange quandry about what he should do. If it was a building on fire, he surely had to report it, less there be lives at stake. On the other hand, he
really wasn't meant to stop and definitely not supposed to leave the vehicle unattended, at all.

These thoughts soon became irrelevant as, as he comes closer to the glow he can see that it wasn't a bulding on fire at all. By now he could see that
the glow was actually, an *object*, seemingly *parked*, in a field alongside the A38. At this point, he has slowed considerably and is wondering what
sort of *object* it is. He remembers that it seemed to pulse and might well have pyramidal in shape but he glow is so intense , as it pulses with a
red hue that goes from a dull glow to almost blindingly bright, that the shape is hard to make out.

What happened exactly next, to this day i am not totally sure of. The guys face quite clearly showed he was remembering something that really did,
*freak him out*, for want of a better phrase. It was at this point i also became aware that, this *friend* the tale was about, was indeed, my trucker
host and he was telling me what he saw.

Curiosisty got the better of him and he pulled the truck up by the side of the road. He sat and watched the object pulsing dull to bright red for a
minute or so before climbing down from the cab with a flash light to investigate. The next thing he remembered was sitting in his cab, in a lay-by, as
the lights of another Towmaster truck shining in his wing mirrors dazzle him momentarily, as it pulled up behind him.

The truck is accompanied by a Police car and they quiz him as to where he had been. The upshot being that, the police car monitoring them, was
travelling in the opposite direction to the trucks counting the Towmaster trucks off as they passed them. They had counted 1 and then not seen the
scond for some 20-30 mins. They knew they should have seen 3 in that time and had stopped the third truck and asked, was there a problem?.

The guy in the third truck had said that the second truck, my hosts, had pulled off as he had reached the previous service stop so they must have seen
it. So they turn round, begin to backtrack along their route and, lo and behold, there the missing truck is, parked in a lay by. lights off. The
trucker who has had the incident makes up some story about feeling a little unwell pulling over to the lay by and turning the lights off. Not feeling
well, he had not noticed the police car and had failed to turn his lights on and, as a result, they had missed the truck in the dark. As the guy said.
Given the situation what could the police do? He was safe, as was the cargo and what other explanation was there for having missed him?

And that is it. The tale i was told back in November 1980. I've spoken about it on a one to one basis, but till tonight, i have never really had
anything to back it up has having any basis in truth. That is until i found this whislt searching for the umpteenth time for anything on Towmaster
Trucks. trucknetuk.com... ..scroll down and there is someone talking about Towmasters being part of the group that
included Bells Whisky (Note; link now dead). At long last, i have something that corroborates, at least, part of the guys tale and does tend to
suggest that he was being totally truthful about, under no circumstances given the value of his cargo and insurance policies, being allowed to pick up
hitchhikers... I have checked with someone in insurance and they cofirmed that, given the value of the goods being carried, they themselves would have
insisted on a strict "no hitchihiker policy" as part of the contract.

Not only that, but i have been aware, this last 27 years, that to go public with this story could endanger a guys career. If, what he told me was
true, about the security involved, it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to put two and two together to work out who exactly had, not only broken the
rules about stopping , but compounded it by then picking a hitchhiker up. The guys job would have been kaput. There can't be that many drivers
working that route , regularly, for that specific company. However, given the guys age then, i would assume that he might well be retired now, and i
haven't seen a Towmaster truck on the road in ages. I am assuming the company no longer exists.

One other thing i could tell from the guys demeanour and voice and the details he gave me, was that, this was something that had happened that month,
this wasn't something that had happeend the previous year etc...

So there you are. In November 1980 a guy driving a truck spots a strange glowing object in a field and seemingly, him and the truck, vanish for some
10- 20 minutes, only to show up in a layby a couple of miles down the road. A police car, specifically looking out for the guy and his truck, having
missed them totallly in the interim period. All this, on a virtually deserted road that was no more than two trucks wide, in width, at the time, and
the Police are looking for a, 10 foot high, 40 ft long, truck and trailer on it, with virtually no other traffic, at all, on the road.

I've always wondered was this just a wind up, a tall tale he liked to tell to his fellow travellers. However the guys face as he told me the details
showed me that he was either a damn good actor, or he was genuinly scared and just needed to offload to someone he would never see again about what
had what happened to him. To finally find the link, i have posted above, allows me, in good conscience to pass the tale on into the public domain.
What brought it to mind tonight was reading some of the Rendlesham accounts. it wasnlt for a good few years before the realisation struck me. This
tale, which has some similarites to the Rendlesham incident, ie an anomalous object on the ground with a strange pulsing light, happened just over a
month BEFORE Rendlesham and that the guy informed me of it before Rendlesham....

Sounds like the flat disk ship photographed by Rex Heflin.
I had heard of the Papas New Guinea ship in the "Man Made UFOs" book that
seemed to give only credible sightings.
I don't think the Hill story was even in the book as much of the book was perhaps
written around sightings before the technology cover up took a bigger step into
the world of alien domination.

Here's another strange close range report from retired Chilean Brigadier General
Hernán Gabrielli Rojas who witnessed a 'colossal' UFO over the deserts of northern Chile:

General Gabrielli recounts UFO encounter

General Gabrielli recalls that in 1978, while conducting a training flight involving a pair of Northrop F-5E Tiger IIs not far from
Antofagasta, their radars alerted them to the presence of a mammoth intruder.
"It was noon and I was flying with captain Danilo Catalán -we were both flight instructors," Gabrielli told the journalist.
" Accompanying us were avionics tech Fernando Gómez and another trainee. The F-5 is radar equipped, and a line appeared from side to side-in
other words, a trace throughout the bottom side of the screen.
A trace for a surface ship, a cruiser, is approximately one centimeter long, but this line went from one side [of the screen] to another.
I assumed the radar scope had failed, and I said as much to Danilo Catalán, but his radar also "failed".
I then advised the ground radar at Antofagasta and they also picked up the line. We were engaged with these details when we looked toward the east: we
were flying from north to south in the vicinity of Mejillones, and saw a deformed cigar-shaped object. Deformed, like a plantain banana. It was
swathed in smoke."
The general estimated the size of the craft as being comparable to that of a dozen aircraft carriers. "It was large and must have been some 15 to
20 miles away. It moved in the same direction as us. We had no missiles, guns or anything. As you can imagine, the fright was more or less
considerable. We could see a large thing surrounded in smoke, and from which a vapor issued.
All of this situation must have lasted some five minutes. We approached the UFO but it was motionless. It neither approached nor retreated -it merely
sailed parallel to us. It was quite impressive, because it was truly something strange, and something could be seen in concealment behind the smoke,"
he recalled.
Although the F-5E's are equipped with gun cameras, the general did not say if any footage had been obtained. The UFO "mothership" eventually
vanished, heading toward Easter Island.
"The sky cleared and the lines on the radar vanished," he informed Riffo. "However, there had been an object physically flying there. It's not a
yarn, let me tell you. It's my only experience with UFOs."

Pretty infamous unexplained UFO incident from Puerto Rico in 1980 - the pilots report witnessing a 'weird' object which made them change course
three times and were never heard from again.

The Disappearance of flight N3808H, Puerto Rico, 1980:

Location. Mona Channel, Caribbean Ocean near Puerto Rico

Date: June 28 1980

At 1810 Jose Antonio Maldonado Torres and his friend, Jose Pagan Santos, took off from Las Americas International Airport in Santo Domingo, Dominican
Republic in an Ercoupe aircraft marked N3808H.
The Ercoupe was owned by Santo’s father Jose Pagan Jimenez, an Aero
Police officer in Puerto Rico. They were bound for home in Puerto Rico. At 2003 the Las Mesas radar site and several aircraft picked up radio
transmissions from N3808H:

“Mayday, Mayday, Ercoupe ocho cero, eight zero, zero, Hotel. We can see a strange object in our course, we are lost, Mayday, Mayday.”

An Iberia Airlines flight IB-976 en route from Santo Domingo to Spain responded to the Mayday and received a reply:

“Ah we are going from Santo Domingo to ah San Juan International but we found ah a weird object in our course that made us change course about
three different times we got it right in front of us now at one o’clock, our heading is zero seven zero degrees…our altitude one thousand six
hundred a zero seven zero degrees…our VORs got lost off frequency…”

Iberia Flight IB-976 then relayed a message from San Juan Center asking N3808H to turn on their transponder.
N3808H replied that the Ercoupe was not equipped with a transponder. At 2006 Iberia IB-976 asked for their call sing and estimated position and
received this reply:

“Right now we are supposed to be a about thirty five miles from the coast of Puerto Rico but we have something weird in front of us that make us
lose course all the time I changed our course a second (unintelligible) our present heading right now is three hundred we are right again in the same
stuff sir.”

They were not heard from again. At 2012 the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Range verified the last radar position of N3808H as thirty five miles west of
Puerto Rico. A search that included Santos’s father was then mounted which centered on this last radar position. It was discontinued after two days
when no trace had been found. No trace was ever found.

That has always been one of my all time favorite cases and I have looked into it extensively (going so far as to actually speak by phone with some of
the players).

While I (or anyone) can't really come to a conclusion, I will say that there were some funny dealings going on with some of the folks involved, and
that this case may have something more to do with a man made issue.

I have only personally looked into 3 cases, this being one of them. My results were disappointing, especially because the more I found out the less
and less it pointed to anything that I wanted to find, lol. Of the other two cases, one was really cool, and the other I wouldn't even admit to
looking into (I was young and dumb at the time).

At about 9:30 p.m. on that hot summer evening, Mrs. Knight was in her kitchen when she heard a peculiar "bzzt" noise, apparently against the
screen of the kitchen window. The noise was repeated several times and thinking it was a large insect, she went to the window and looked out.

The topic of sound and vibrations is very close to the supposed operation of these ships.
The power of nature going up against high audio frequencies of electrical vibrations has
been investigated by only one person in Tesla. Traveling at the speed of light such power
is enormous and as they say in integral calculus we go from zero to infinity. That is
super power and might effect nearby objects which the worst might be Bell Island 1978.

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